2023 has been a mixed bag of emotions for Chelsea fans. Off the pitch it’s seemingly been great and even as a pessimist I struggle to find fault with the majority of players we’ve signed. On the pitch, we’ve been rubbish.
When our initial Champions League group came out it was hard not to be pretty happy. It was perfect in so many senses. You had the slightly left-field side in Dinamo Zagreb, the delightful European Away Day in RB Salzburg and the absolutely massive AC Milan.
We didn’t do Milan. Specifically, we neglected the San Siro. A trip which I absolutely regret not doing even more so when the news came out that the San Siri will be getting demolished after the 24/25 season. There’s still time to make the trip, but we will need a helping hand from UEFA.
With this regret in mind, the minute we drew Dortmund there was absolutely zero doubt on whether we would make the trip. Ask anyone to make a bucket list of 10 stadiums they’d like to visit in world football and I’m certain that the Signal Iduna Park would feature in 99% of those lists.
I’ve never been to Germany, so I really had very little idea of what to expect from the city of Dortmund. I suppose in my mind, it would be quite like England just with everyone speaking German instead. Flying from London City Airport, I was very surprised to find us touching down at Düsseldorf Airport not even an hour after taking off. I had no idea Germany was that close.
The flight itself was uneventful with the highlight of it regrettably being when I somehow managed to spill a Diet Coke all over myself. A slice of misfortune which was perhaps a sign of things to come.
Once in Düsseldorf it was just a quick 45 minute trip on a train over to Dortmund. This really was an incredibly pleasant and reasonably priced experience and really made me realise just how terrible our own train network is in the UK. Arriving in Dortmund we made a quick trip to the National Football Museum to collect our tickets for the game before heading over to our hotel.
Upon entering the hotel it was time to get down to business and get stuck in to what we really came to Germany for. The true motive. Glorious glorious steins.
I think it’s fair to say that Germany Beer lived up to all of the expectations I had for it, it was delicious and very reasonably priced wherever we went. As I said earlier, I had very little expectations for what Germany and specifically Dortmund would be like. Dortmund itself seemed a pleasant enough place, and had everything you would expect of a modern city. Overall, the best way to describe it would be grey and I certainly can’t see it winning any city of the year awards.
Chelsea fans across the city were in very good spirits. Perhaps the least surprising event of the whole trip was a new chant to the tune of “We’ve got Super Frankie Lampard…” which was then changed to “We’ve got Super Tommy Tuchel…”. Now it has become… wait for it… “We’ve got Enzo in the middle…”
It’s a catchy enough chant sure, I can’t help but wish we had come up with something a little bit more creative. But, most damning of all, is the fact that it doesn’t have any reference to Graham Potter. That being said, I suspect if he does manage to turn our fortunes around he will find his own name being sung at the start of the song. There is still time Graham.
The Dortmund square which fans convened at is undoubtedly the ugliest I’ve seen on an away day, but it did have a good selection of bars and pubs surrounding it. The first one we went in presented an immediate issue, it didn’t take cards. Unfortunately we didn’t realise this until we had ordered and been handed out beers. There was no doubt a language barrier between myself and the lady behind the bar, and having finally realised she was telling us it was cash only, she seemed pretty happy as I put 20 pounds into her hand.
It wasn’t until she looked at the notes that she gave me a look which said ‘What on earth am I meant to do with this?’ Thankfully a fellow fan was able to change our 20 pounds for 20 euros and we made a swift exit from the pub. Thankfully, the next place took card.
As the crowds in the square grew, so did the police presence surrounding it. From my perspective, the mass of 4,000 Chelsea fans were well behaved and there was no need for police interference at any point. Somewhat unusual for a European away game.
With around three hours to go until kick off, the police began encouraging people to leave the square and head to the ground. Not a chance I was doing this. Worse still, they told a quite ridiculous lie that the underground system was only able to handle one thousand people an hour. As the number of fans departing began to increase, I was quite happy to stay in the square and nurse a few more beers.
Unsurprisingly, it would happen that the underground system could indeed handle more than a thousand people an hour and we were able to board the metro system with no trouble whatsoever. With about 10 of us on a train full of Dortmund fans, we made the short trip to the Westfalenstadion chanting all kinds of rubbish to the Dortmund fans as we had a sort of “chant off” with them.
Upon making our way out of the station, it was still a long time until the game and so we had time for another quick beer outside the ground. You could certainly make a case for this beer being entirely unnecessary but we knew this would be our last chance before we were being served 0.5% stuff in the ground. No thanks.
For me, the Signal Iduna Park is simply the perfect stadium for the home Dortmund fans. It’s been designed in such a way that every club should look up to. At most there are two tiers in the stands and they’re steep too, the fans are on top of the pitch. When you compare it to these ridiculous bowl grounds we see so often now, there is no comparison and the atmosphere we saw last night reflected that.
The yellow wall is without a doubt one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in football. It is enormous. I can’t really describe it with words, it wouldn’t do it justice. The picture below does a better job.
The away end itself was pretty perfect from a viewing perspective with it being right down the bottom by the pitch. In general, I thought the policing of it was pretty poor. It’s fully standing with no seats and does have crush barriers every three rows or so but people had a tendency to gather closer to the top of it meaning it did get pretty crammed at points.
There was only one set of toilets between 4,000 or so people which isn’t exactly exhaustive and the burden on them wasn’t exactly helped by the bloke next to me throwing up into one of the urinals for a good few minutes whilst still managing to hold his half drunk 0.5% beer. Even more embarrassing, was one fan trying to chant “Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that.” Obviously 1995 doesn’t exist to them but thankfully they were immediately shut up by fans around them.
I always find it a joke when these grounds have Heineken logos plastered all over but only serve low alcohol alternatives in the away end. I’m not entirely sure everybody knew this however, as people were getting four pack after four pack and taking them into the stands. I paid seven euros for two hot dogs which I felt was very reasonably priced, even if it did leave my mouth drier than the Sahara Desert afterwards.
The game itself feels like a bit of a blur. I think we played well once again and but just couldn’t score. It’s the story of our 2023 so far and I consider myself fortunate enough to have been able to witness three out of the four goals we’ve scored this year.
I thought the ref was an absolute d*ck in all honesty. He gave Reece James a card early on for what was certainly not a yellow card challenge and then failed to punish Dortmund players appropriately for the rest of the game. When Thiago Silva put the ball into the net with the use of his hand, immediately apologising, he was booked.
Joao Felix looked dangerous once again in attack. It’s clear he adds something totally different to our team from both a creative and finishing perspective and whilst he should’ve scored last night, he was still excellent and continues to be a breath of fresh air.
The goal itself was a frustrating one to concede given we went from nearly scoring to conceding ourselves in 10 seconds or so. It was an absolutely fantastic goal from Adeyemi who was lightening quick in accelerating away from an isolated Enzo Fernandez. I don’t consider this to be a fault of anyone in our team, perhaps we overcommitted to the attack but it was a moment of brilliance from the opposition.
Kai Havertz seemed to have forgotten he was playing for a potential move back Germany and put in a fairly typical typical Kai Havertz performance. Delight for Dortmund fans and pain for Chelsea ones. He was ineffective at best and once again every Chelsea fan has found themselves questioning how we were able to spend £600 million pounds in the last six months and not bring in a world class number 9.
Enzo Fernandez and Jude Bellingham are two of the very best young players in the world at the moment and I enjoyed watching them go up against each other in what was an evenly contested battle. It’s hard to say who came out on top in all honesty but both are a joy to watch. It’s testament to just how good Jude is that he’s captain of such a massive club at the age of 19. Some player.
Enzo came close to equalising in the dying embers of the game but Gregor Kobel was able to produce a masterful save to deny him. I can’t say I’ve watched much of him but he was probably my man of the match last night. He was absolutely brilliant.
Losing last night was again a pretty tough one to take, I really do feel like we deserved more from the game but that’s just football. There are still a lot of positive signs from the team, and I really do think it’s only a matter of time before it all clicks.
Leaving the ground afterwards was a surprisingly easy affair. Within 45 minutes of the game ending we were back at the hotel bar accompanied by a stein. God only knows how we managed to get onto the correct train after the game amongst 81,000 other fans.
Overall, I really enjoyed my visit to Dortmund despite the result, whilst this was disappointing it doesn’t even come close to the disappointment I experienced whilst sampling my German McDonalds breakfast. Suffice to say it didn’t live up to my expectations.
We play Dortmund at home on March 7th. Whilst it’s not quite going to require a Napoli or PSG type comeback, we need to see the Bridge bouncing. The away goal rule changing will help us too, under the old terms a Dortmund goal could’ve knocked us out almost immediately but if we can play the way we did last night there will be a good chance we go through to the quarters. I’m hopeful.
Up next, Southampton at home.
The Shed Diaries 